System is 6 months old - camera will not come on, charge light will not come on
Once again, not having the equipment available to inspect makes diagnosis difficult. It appears that you\'re not getting power. But the question is why. Try this:1) Verify hat you have power at the outlet the DC charger is connected to by connecting something that you know is working like a small lamp or fan. If you do not, check your breaker box for a tripped breaker. If there is no tripped breaker, it\'s probably time to call an electrician. However, I\'m betting that you have power at the outlet.2) Verify that the charger transformer is working. This is easy if you have a small electrical meter and know how to use it. Otherwise, you can plugging something that matches the output of the charger into it like an identical camera which you know to be working. Or, if you have another working camera, pull the charger from that one and see if the camera comes on. Transformers do go bad and an outdoor environment is hard on them. However, I don\'t think this is your problem because the camera should have come on when you put in new batteries regardless of the situation with the charger transformer.3) That would indicate the problem is with the camera. At this point STOP and consider whether the camera is still under warranty. If it is and you bought it locally, take it back and tell them what happened. If you bought it online, contact the seller or the manufacturer to find out how to handle repair or replacement. That information may be in your camera manual as well. Let your dealer or GE handle it for you.4) If it\'s out of warranty you can either replace it with another camera or try to fix it. I would not recommend another GE because of this problem. These cameras cone in a variety of shapes, sizes and prices. Some of the least expensive have very good reviews. If you are a do-it-yourselfer you might want to try to fix it. Because of the low price of these cameras, I probably would not want to waste my time fixing it unless I did it for fun or for education. I\'m guessing the problem is a broken wire inside the camera somewhere in the vicinity of where the battery wires from the battery cage lead to the circuit board. This is a VERY common problem with electrical equipment made in China. If you want to open the camera look for an obvious loose red or black wire where the wires connect to the battery cage or where they connect to the circuit board. To fix it, simply solder the wire back where it belongs. If you don\'t see an obvious loose wire, you may have a bad solder joint(another common problem with Chinese-made electronics) and you can either re-solder all of the joints described above or get a meter and check continuity of the circuit from the battery cage through the circuit board. Beyond this, you\'re into more complex testing of the circuit board components and it starts getting tedious and requires more knowledge of when, where and what to test. If I got this far and had not found the problem, I\'d probably cannibalize the camera to save known good parts and junk the rest of it.
6/5/2014 4:49:54 PM •
GE Add-On...
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Answered
on Jun 05, 2014
